Syndicate

Michael Feathers wrote an article for Beautiful Code called On Loving C.

“C has its quirks, but in retrospect, they are a lot less mysterious than the quirks of many other languages.” Well put, there are many languages out there that are really obtuse, containing many more quirks than C.

Crosstalk has a good article this month on where are the future software engineers. In part the article is the usual rant against the teaching of Java as a first programming language, but it is more nuanced than that.

The authors point out that the mathematical requirements are shrinking, and the students are not really being taught the basics any more. Sure Java is nice and easy to learn but it is not a suitable preparation for working in embedded and real-time systems.

I’m still pondering how this relates to software craftsmanship, since traditionally many craftsmen have either a comp sci or sw eng background.